We certainly do not approve of Mr. Charles Dickens’s dictum that champagne’s proper place is not at the dinner-table, but solely at a ball. “A cavalier,” he said, “may appropriately offer at propitious intervals a glass now and then to his danceress. There it takes its fitting rank and position amongst feathers, gauzes,
lace, embroidery, ribbons, white satin, shoes, and eau-de-Cologne, for champagne is simply one of the elegant extras of life.” This is all very well, still the advantageous effect of sparkling wine at an ordinary British dinner-party, composed as it frequently is of people pitchforked together in accordance with the exigencies of the hostess’s visiting-list, cannot be gainsayed. After the preliminary glowering at each other, more Britannico, in the drawing-room, everybody regards it as a relief to be summoned to the repast, which, however, commences as chillily as the soup and as stolidly as the salmon. The soul of the hostess is heavy with the anxiety of prospective dishes, the brow of the host is clouded with the reflection that our rulers are bent upon dragging us into war. Placed between a young lady just out and a dowager of grimly Gorgonesque aspect, you hesitate how to open a conversation. Your first attempts, like those of the Russian batteries on the Danube, are singularly ineffectual, only eliciting a dropping fire of monosyllables. You envy the placidly languid young gentleman opposite, limp as his fast-fading camellia, and seated next to Belle Breloques, who is certain, in racing parlance, to make the running for him. But even that damsel seems preoccupied with her fan, and, despite her aplomb, hesitates to break the icy silence. The two City friends of the host are lost in mute speculation as to the future price of indigo or Ionian Bank shares, while their wives seem to be mentally summarising the exact cost of each other’s toilettes. Their daughters, or somebody else’s daughters, are desperately jerking out monosyllabic responses to feeble remarks concerning the weather, lawn tennis, operatic débutantes, the gravel in the Row, the ill-health of the Princess, and kindred topics from a couple of F.O. men. Little Snapshot, the wit, on the other side of the Gorgon, has tried to lead up to a story, but has found himself, as it were, frozen in the bud. When lo! the butler softly sibillates in your ear the magic word “champagne,” and as it flows, creaming and frothing, into your glass, a change comes over the spirit of your vision.
The hostess brightens, the host coruscates. The young lady
on your right suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose jests are popping as briskly as the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill her. Belle Breloques can always talk, and now her tongue rattles faster than ever, till the languid one arouses himself like a giant refreshed, and gives her as good as he gets. The City men expatiate in cabalistic language on the merits of some mysterious speculation, the prospective returns from which increase with each fresh bottle. One of their wives is discussing the E.C.U. and the S.S.C. with a hitherto silent curate, and the other is jabbering botany to a red-faced warrior. The juniors are in full swing, and ripples of silvery laughter rise in accompaniment to the beaded bubbles all round the table. And all this is due to champagne, that great unloosener not merely of tongues but of purse-strings, as is well known to the secretaries of those charitable institutions which set the wine flowing earliest at their anniversary dinners.
[A few recipes] for sparkling wine cups gathered from various sources will conclude our work. Not having personally tested these we leave the responsibility of them to their respective authors—Soyer, Tovey, Terrington (“Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks”), &c.—premising that it is the merest folly to use a high-class champagne or a fine sparkling hock for a beverage of this description. Sparkling saumur, or the newly-introduced sparkling sauternes, and the cheaper hocks and moselles, will do equally well at a greatly reduced cost. In all cases, too, the kind of liqueur, the amount of sugar, and the flavouring with borage, verbena, pine-apple, or cucumber, may be varied to suit individual tastes. For soda or seltzer water we have invariably substituted Apollinaris, which is far better adapted for effervescent drinks of this description by reason of its purity and softness, its freedom from any distinct flavour, and above all its powerful natural effervescence.
Soyer’s elaborate recipe for champagne cup for a large party is as follows:—
Prepare three ounces of oleo-saccharine by rubbing some lumps of sugar against the outside of a lemon or Seville orange and scraping away the sugar as it absorbs the essential oil contained in the rind of the fruit. Put the oleo-saccharine with the juice of four lemons in a vessel, add a quart bottle of Apollinaris water (Soyer says soda-water, but Apollinaris is certainly preferable), and stir well together until the sugar is dissolved. Then pour in one quart of syrup of orgeat and whip the mixture up well with an egg whisk in order to whiten it. Next add a pint of cognac brandy, a quarter of a pint of Jamaica rum and half a pint of maraschino; strain the whole into a bowl, adding plenty of pounded ice if the weather is warm, and pour in three bottles of champagne, stirring the mixture well with the ladle while doing so in order to render the cup creamy and mellow.
A less potent and pretentious beverage, and better suited for a summer drink, is the subjoined:—
Dissolve two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar in a quart of Apollinaris water. Add a wineglass of curaçoa, a sprig of green borage or a couple of slices of cucumber with the juice and fine shavings of the outside peel of a lemon, and a pound of bruised ice. After the whole has been well stirred pour in the champagne and serve.